Honestly I am a very pro-norms person. I think that’s why I find Coons et al so exasperating: I’ve actually thought enough about the role norms play to realize that if one side completely abandons them completely, the other side can’t bring them back by just norming extra hard
Norms exist because of an incentive: all sides want to avoid total war, which is unpredictable and destructive. But if you treat norms as a pair of handcuffs that bind you regardless of what the other side does, the incentive flips: the other side has MORE reason to break them.
That’s why gleeful GOP normbreaking can be traced directly to the plaintive whining of centrist lunkheads like Chris Coons: he’s reassuring them that there is no risk of blowback even if they cheat and break the rules. Normbreaking becomes a risk-free, high-profit enterprise.
Ugh the typo in this tweet
It’s also why the path to restoring norms is to confront the GOP fully, on all its bad behavior, with all the powers at our disposal. It’s a bad, bad fight for them in a lot of ways, and fear of having to fight it is how you get them to reconsider.
tl;dr: People turn to norms when they see the costs of a norm-free world. Right now the GOP is living in a magical world where their opponents feel strongly bound by norms but they do not. Predictably, they love it and want it to continue.
